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Monday, May 26, 2014

Where do all those kids sleep?

A few days ago, a reader named Mari Mari left this comment on a post "since you're talky talkative, wouldn't you like to share with us details about your sleeping arrangements? Now that you have to make room for one more bed/crib/sleeping stuff, I`m very curious to know how do you fit so many beds in a house, if kids share room, and what about boy/girl ratio, does it count at all? :-)"

Mari Mari, thank you so much for asking this question! Even if you're the only one interested, placenta brain has prevented me from having a coherent blog thought in some weeks now, so rooming conditions at La Casa Borobia are going to have to suffice for err'body.
First, I'll note that we have a fairly large house (I think it's 2100 square feet or so) with four whole rooms devoted almost entirely to sleeping. Historically, and in terms of the rest of the world, the amount of space we've got to work with is enormous. Second, I don't like a lot of "stuff." There is a good amount of purging going on around here pretty much at all times. And finally, the bedrooms really are just used for beds and clothing. All toys and books (besides what is squirreled away in closets and under beds like so many precious nuggets of contraband) are kept in the den/family room/play room/ school room. Yes, that's a long name, apt for that huge expanse of space. Really it's the extra living space that makes the bedroom situation so doable, by the way.

The boy/girl ratio was juuuuuuuuuust starting to get tricky, but luckily we're throwing another boy into the mix now and I'm sure it will all work out somehow. It always does.

So, yes. My kids share rooms. Here's how it's divided up right now:bedroom #1: the mama and the papa and a bassinet for the baby and a small toddler bed for nighttime foolishness, nighttime nightmares, nighttime tummy aches, and all other annoying nighttime things perpetrated by miniature walking humans.

bedroom #2: the baby room. This room is tiny, tiny, tiny. Mary sleeps in there in her crib and we've recently wedged a toddler bed back in there that no one is using until Mary moves into it and Pointy Bird starts using the crib. This is all in fantasy land right now, of course, because who knows what his temperament and sleeping habits are going to be like. This can make baby sleeping arrangements berry berry tricky.

bedroom #4: Lizzy and Paul in an identical twin sized bunk bed. Clothing not in closet and drawers but rather strewn about the floor in a manner that makes me want to poke my eyes out. A shelf of treasures, overflowing. Not-squirreled-away contraband. The end.

What I imagine will happen eventually is that Mary will move in with Lizzy and Paul will move in with PB. At what point and into which rooms this will occur remains to be seen. I can promise that there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth when this happens, of course, because I can't stand finding all the criz-nap that they've been shoving into corners and behind dressers and where did I go wrong as a mother???? Oh, you thought the children would be the ones crying? No, I think they won't care much.

So really that makes only 2 kids per sleeping room along with an enormous play room with all manner of toys and tools and costumes and dolls and musical instruments and three huge bookshelves and a craft table and an armoire full of fabric and craft supplies and a desk with a computer and a printer and...dang. My kids have a really great life, don't they? We could easily fit at least three more kids after PB up in here with all this space!

36 comments
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I'm glad I'm not the only one who is shocked/appalled at what I find whenever I move the kids' stuff around. Wailing and gnashing of teeth is right. I'm pretty sure my own personal hell looks just like the space underneath my boys' beds :)

And 2 kids per bedroom is pretty good! We're blessed with 4 bedrooms too and we have a large boys room (5 and 3 year old) and a small girl room (lonely 1 year old) and a small teen room (adoptive 12 year old who needs her own space because...well, rough upbringing). I figure we can fit at least one more into either the girl or boy room and after that we might have to commandeer the large upstairs sewing closet, add a window, and call it a nursery (it's 7' x 10'....truly massive!)

Have you seen the Ikea Kura bunk bed, I'm totally coveting that as a young-child bunk bed solution...maybe it would work for Lizzy and Mary too? My boys and I are still trying to talk my DH into getting them the bunk bed, he's an old stick in the mud who never knew the joys of bunk beds ;)

It's easier to change sheets if two people do it - one at each end of the top bunk. It's possible to do it while pregnant; depending on the height of the bed compared to the ceiling and the size of the belly. It's much easier to have spouse or tall child help (or take over completely from 7 months on). Teenagers are awesome helpers to pregnant mamas. I highly recommend them!

Okay, having eleven kids and a three bedroom 19th century farmhouse means I have four (five if Joseph is home from college) boys in another and five girls the other. If you do the math, you might realize that the baby girl is sleeping in a crib in the upstairs hallway. But since babies eventually learn to climb, we are switching the boys and girls and moving her in the soon to be new girls room. Ugh. Commence wailing and gnashing of teeth!

I have 11 kids in 3 bedrooms too! However, we cheated and use the family room as a master bedroom (but it still functions as a family room in the day). Also, I confess that the oldest is away at college, another is away at a residential high school, so the only time that we have all 11 home is at holidays. But we have a bed for everyone! 3 boys share one ( bunk and single), 3 girls in another (bunk with trundle - which cuts down on the squirreling away of treasures and trash underneath), 3 girls in another ( bunk and crib) and the 3 year old who prefers a couch despite our attempts to get him in a bed. Crib for baby in parents room. We've been flexible about boy/girl mix - it depends on personalities and level of modesty. Next year when girl #2 goes to college, the oldest boy will probably move into her room with the toddler. It'll almost be like having his own room. Trying to keep the clutter down is the hard part - my middle kids seem to think clothes belong on the floor. Where did I go wrong?!

i like to see how people are set up too. People worry about this! especially my grandmother, who seems to have forgotten she raised five kids in a two bedroom house...we habe four bedrooms. One is a playroom/schoolroom with a futon my husband calls the "master bedroom annex"...it is sometimes put into use when our bed is too full. Then we have the masterbedroom with a sidecar crib for baby, a girls room inhabited by two girls, a boys room with two boys.

Every time I hear people talk about how "psychologically vital" it is for kids to have their own space I want to scream. You know what else is psychologically vital? Learning that the universe does not revolve around you or your needs. If bedroom sharing is so detrimental, how the heck has humanity made it this far? Since I'm pretty sure that a room all to little precious and little precious's psyche is a brand new construct.

And if someone needs some alone space, I don't feel like that requires an entire room available 24 hours a day that they can kick people out of with a door they can slam. A little tent, a swing or nook outside, the bathroom with the door closed, time awake after the extroverts are in bed. This is all still very first-world privilege that I'm talking about, too, and really doable even for people with relatively biggish families.

Let me tell you a little story. When I was 14 and angst-y and the only girl in my family, my parents uprooted 8 kids and moved from a 1800ish sq ft home in suburban San Diego to the mountains near Yosemite. We moved into a 400 sq ft cabin. Futons were rolled out at night and put away in the morning. Running water, but no toilet, and no water heater. Bath water was boiled and the bathroom was a plein aire outhouse a hundred feet from the house. It wasn't long before another 400 sq ft were added and we all thought we'd died and gone to heaven. 9 months later my parents bought a 400 sq ft vacation home (on 40 acres) a few miles away and proceeded to add 1700 sq ft on to it. This took approx 2 years to complete. In the meantime we lived in a variety of configurations, not the least of which were some trailers where the kids were packed in like sardines. My first sister was born in that tiny house and I'd never been so happy to add people to our family as I was then.

In my humble opinion, that move was the very best thing my parents have ever done for our family. Sharing rooms was the best thing about it, and no matter how big our house gets, I don't foresee a whole lotta single rooms. Sounds like you've got some great organizational skillz, Ms. D.

We raised our 5 in a 1,000 square foot home. One br for the grown ups (with a crib for anyone under the age of 1 or so), a 9 x 12 room with bunks, tall dresser and one closet for 2 girls, 5 years apart and a 14 x 12 had set of bunks and a single for 3 boys. - which later included a wall with three closets with three doors with key locks built during a tense week when they were teenagers. I think they were 12, 13 and 15. We did not want to hear about anyone wearing or using an item belonging to another so anything you wanted for yourself must be locked in your closet so I dont' have to hear about who was wearing whose shin guards or whatever.

People have likened the sharing of the rooms to child abuse (especially since all 7 of us also shared one bathroom). Oh, the cruelty of it all! The best part is now that the boys are grown - I use the closets to store holiday decorations - one for Christmas/Winter, one for Fall and one for Spring/Americana. No more pulling down the attic ladder!!

Those people are cuh-ra-zy, child abuse, c'mon! My kids all beg to share rooms. Currently the 12 year old and the boys are fighting over who can have Tahlia sleep in their room. The boys were heartbroken when I broke the news that I wasn't really planning to move them into their bedroom. Btw I love the idea of 3 closets in the room with locks, genius!

We bought a 2-bedroom house in 2009 knowing we would be selling it in 2013. I was not pregnant at the time of the purchase and it was the PERFECT house in every other sense. (Yes, a 3rd bedroom would have been nice since there was no basement, but whatever. It was amazing.) I was shocked at how many people said, "So, you're not planning on having children anytime soon if you bought a 2-bedroom house?" As if the number of children we were possible of procreating in 4 years would not have fit in a bedroom together for a limited amount of time. Sadly there were no kids to keep in rooms there, so I was especially grateful I didn't have an unused nursery taunting me. It worked out just fine. We now have a 3-bedroom house with a miracle baby due in 2 months, and we anticipate an even shorter stay in this house. People are all, "OMG, WHERE YOU GONNA PUT THE REST OF YOUR KIDS!?!?!??!" As if, you know, we could magically procure them. And as if any couple, no matter how fertile, could produce enough kids in 3 years to outgrow a three bedroom house. I'm already extremely concerned about how to raise a balanced, selfless child when there may not be many (or any, cause nobody owes me more of them) siblings to keep her from getting her way all the time. It would be my DREAM COME TRUE if she gets to share a bedroom someday! Lord have mercy!

I've been waiting for the opportunity to do a dish recon on my twenty year old son's room. I'm not embarrassed to admit that when he fell in the yard with the hedge trimmers this afternoon and my dad had to rush him to the ER for stitches - they weren't even out of the driveway before my mom and I headed to his room with a handful of trashbags and a box for dishes. Seriously. We were not disappointed. We have literally THREE full households worth of dishes from where we combined my house and my parents' house and my grandma's house and we had maybe three spoons left. The rest were in the grown child's room. I know it's sad. Part of it is his autism but seriously, dirty dishes are dirty dishes and that nonsense is insane. We got two boxes of dishes and four trashbags of trash before we gave out. NOW... on the subject of sleeping space.. I grew up as the only girl out of five kids which meant that I always had my own room. It was the smallest but it was MINE. I had all boys and always tried to work it so they each had their own room. The two oldest were partners in crime, though, and even as teenagers would end up sleeping in each others' rooms all the time.

I've got six kids, in what should be plenty of space - just over 2200 sq ft (we're not sure when it was built but we're thinking it's approaching 100 years old). The problem with us lies in about 200 sq ft, is a room addition that was poorly done, has no insulation, gaps in the outside door that we get snow drifts in the winter, and the ventilation doesn't work, so it has no HVAC to speak of. It gets too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, so it's become a 2-season room. We try to use it as the playroom, but only in spring and fall.

The other problem we have is that we only have 3 bedrooms, which would be fine, except we're not balanced in the boy/girl ratio. We are currently at 5/1. So we have 4 boys in 1 room (a bunkbed and a trundle bed). And the baby boy's crib is in his almost 7 year old sister's room. Our basement, which is nearly 700sqft, would be great to use, if hubby would finally finish getting his "mancave"/office area cleaned up and organized how he wants it so the older kids can go play Legos and blocks.

We have hopes of redoing that playroom into a master suite, but that's several years down the road.

thank you sooooo much for taking the time and sharing!! By the way, I have only 3 kids. the oldest sleeps alone and the youngest (a boy and a girl, 2 years apart) share another room. For now. When is it unconvenient for a boy and a girl to share? by their teens? before? never? i see you have boy and girl sharing. do they complain?

We have two boys who could have their own rooms, but share one room. Only because I like that they can share rooms. My sister and I grew up with our own rooms and our own bathrooms but we loved going to the cabin where we shared a room! It felt like a treat to be able to share space with her!

Micaela- I love that story! It's such a dream of mine to one day do something similar! :)

I think this topic hit a nerve (in a good way). I love hearing how people manage these things. People assume that we would have our almost-6-year-old son share with our 1-year-old son and have our 2.5-year-old daughter have the 3rd room. However, we have the baby on his own because he sleeps differently than the older children. It's funny how people think it is critical that we get a bigger house before having a fourth child--what if it is a boy?! Well...I think it's fairly easy to have opposite-sex kids share rooms when they are children (not sure about teenagers, I am one of six girls/no boys). Also, it's not impossible to have three children share one room.

If anything, I think a little crowding is good for families. My family was such much happier once we moved into a house that was about 1/3 the size of the one we had spent 9 years in. We had to spend more time together and couldn't just count on the echo-y-ness of the big house to let us yell for each other--had to actually walk around and speak in a normal tone of voice as sound didn't actually carry well at all.

As long as you're taking questions...1.) How rural is your house? Is it horrible to realize you have to run to the drugstore/grocery store? Or not so bad?2.) Who takes care of the chickens when they are outside? What all does that entail?3.) How much do you manage to get from your garden? How into it do the kids get? Do you preserve anything?4.) Tips for assessing how each kid is handling each grade level in homeschool--when do you know that a given approach/level is not working? How quickly do you change things?5.) Who are each of your children named after? Any special stories with names/godparents?6.) Finish your life story--how did you finally come into the church? Meet Tommy? How did your family and friends take some of your unexpected decisions?7.) Ways you integrate prayer into family life/school day. Favorite things, things that are hard to stick to, etc.

If you're looking for something easy for posts, you might be able to have some sort of form where people can ask questions and you can use the ones you like to fill in a standing post, like "Ask Dweej Fridays." You could turn it into a link-up if you announced the question ahead of time and kept it to something that anyone could answer. i.e., this post: What are your family's sleeping arrangements (position on pets, screen time, system for not losing library books, meal planning, saving recipes, making one-on-one time with spouse/kids, etc.).

Good luck with the next few weeks! We are praying for your family. You are awesome!

Yes I do find this very interesting, thanks for sharing :) I find it kind of hilarious that my #2 reason for hoping for at least two boys and 2 girls is for the sheer practicality of room sharing. But God knows better than me, so maybe our daughter will be flooded with brothers and spend her childhood always housed with the baby!

I am one of six (living) kids. There's a 14 year 9 month difference, oldest to youngest. Our house had three bedrooms and one bathroom (which didn't even have a shower until I was in high school! ... and horror of horrors, the TV broke one summer and we went without for nearly a year!) One bedroom was my parents ... we were not allowed in there at all. (It was so small that a full size bed and one nightstand left you just one very small aisle to get to the bed.) One bedroom was HUGE (I have no idea the actual size) ... the other tiny. When all of us were at home, my oldest sister and myself shared the tiny room ... younger sister in bed in hall.) When my oldest brother went into the Air Force ... my two sisters and I shared the HUGE room, and the two remaining brothers shared the tiny room. (Bunk beds, dresser, closet, peg board wall to hang stuff.) When the oldest sister got married, younger sister and I moved to tiny room and brother's got the big room. It continued like this until my younger sister and I were the only ones still living at home and then we each got our own room. And you know what else? Our bedrooms NEVER had doors on them ... Mom bought some and had them installed before she sold the house! However, my husband was raised in LARGE homes (one of them - they moved frequently for a while when he was young - had four floors!) There were 4 children. No one ever HAD to share a room or a bathroom. To this day -- and they are now in their late 60's, early 70's THEY CANNOT SHARE WELL. I personally think that if they'd had to share bedrooms and one bathroom they would be better SHARE- ERS NOW!

We have 3 bedrooms and 5 kids, soon to be 6. I gave up the master bedroom to 3 little girls. There is so much space in there! We got these IKEA beds which can go different lengths--toddler bed to a full twin. My husband and I have really scandalized our families because we both grew up with the notion that "every kid needs his own room." I feel like my kids will be better roommates in college when they are used to sharing a room.

The one problem I run into is when the baby transitions out of sleeping in our room, but isn't yet old enough to sleep well in the "big" kid room. I can usually handle a baby sleeping in the parents' room until around 8 months. After that, I feel ready to reclaim my room as an "adult only" space. Most of my babies are not good sleepers, so I feel guilty putting them in another bedroom when he or she is still waking up 4 times a night. Our last baby was "Miss Colic" and slept a few weeks in the dining room in a pack' n' play. When we had a colic baby in a 2 bedroom apartment, she slept alone in the kids bedroom. My 3 and 5 year old slept every night on our bedroom floor for a few weeks. So funny!

I'm also very much against the Frank Lloyd Wright Open Floor Plan idea. I like my downstairs to have proper rooms. That makes it so much quieter and lets a big family of kids easily find their own "alone space." I like finding quiet corners for reading and art in different parts of the house, rather than using a bedroom.

I've totally been getting anxious- for no reason- about adding our new little guy into our house. This post is A-awesome- And I have to admit I always marvel at the level of organization from your pix of your casa- yes, I say organization. Just know that's how it seems from here. :) And- so you've inspired me to get rid of that giant table o crap sitting in my son's room and re-do stuff. So says wife without consulting husband, but seriously, I can't stand the clutter that's building up. It's making our livable space seem like it's encroaching on my headspace. Which it is. So, to nesting and a changing I go. My son's room is pa-lenty big enough for both him and little Miss, so , to toddler girl bed Ikea shopping, craigslisting I go! Thanks Dweej. And I really hope we get to meet PB like today.

I always think that the reaction people give me when I tell them that 4 of our boys SHARE a room is usually a negative one, as if every child deserves their own room fully equipped with an xbox, television, surround sound and an array of apple products. UUGGH. My boys love sharing a room so much that if I talk about splitting them up they usually throw a fit.

I love your blog, Dwija. Just love it. I've been remiss in reading any blogs lately, and why? I cannot think what I have been doing with my time while missing out on all this good stuff here. Thank you for sharing. You are a wonderful Mom, it's evident even through the blogsphere. God bless you and your beautiful, growing family!!!

Our sons are 2 years 4 months apart and have shared a room ever since we brought little brother home from the hospital. When we moved into a bigger home we used the extra room for office/sewing/guest room. well, until little sis came along. but you wanna hear what's so endearing? to this day the boys say they have nothing but happy memories about sharing a room, can't imagine or wouldn't wish it otherwise, and that it prepared them well for college. Roomates, ya know?! it's all in the presentation!

We have three children (sister 12, sister 11, & brother 8) and live in a rather large four-bedroom house. Even though all three could have their own room, we've chosen to have all three share a rather small room together. (We think bedroom clutter is directly proportional to available horizontal spaces.) The girls each have a dresser and share the closet in there. Our son keeps his clothes in the bedroom closet next door as there's not enough room in their bedroom. We know we can always change things up if our situation changes, but for now, we think having them all share a room is good for rubbing off all their rough edges, and that if one can get along with one's own siblings, one can get along with just about anyone. At one point in history, we gave our son his own room. He was so lonely, we eventually put him back with the girls. At one point in history, we also had our two youngest and most clutterific children sharing a room together, but we again found that having all of them share a room was better. They complement one another well… their strengths and weaknesses edify one another. And there is something so sweet and beautiful about bedtime prayers together in their bedroom, and then listening to them telling each other stories before going to sleep.